"When the film-maker Daniela Völker met Hans Jürgen Höss, the 90-year-old son of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, she had understood that he did not recall witnessing any of the horrors, despite spending almost four years of his early childhood living in the villa adjacent to the camp.
'At first, he really didn’t. I had a German cameraman who said I was wasting my time and money and to leave.' But undeterred, Völker hung around for a few days and on the last day of filming gave Hans Jürgen his father’s confessional autobiography, which he had never read. 'I’d selected parts for him to read. And you could see the change in his face as he started reading.'"
~ Anne Joseph
It's almost as if it helped illustrate how some people's innate capacity to rely on self-absorption as a survival mechanism was what made some of them more capable dehumanizing others while still enjoying a superior quality of life (for a temporary amount of time.)
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